View full sizeMarvin Fong, The Plain DealerThe Cleveland City Council approved legislation to allow voters to decide if Mayor Frank Jackson should appoint the city's next fire chief and command staff.

(CORRECTION: Because of an editor's error, an early version of this story at 11:15 a.m. incorrectly said the legislation had already been approved by the City Council.)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland voters may decide whether Mayor Frank Jackson should have the power to appoint the city’s fire chief and the chief’s command staff if the City Council today approves legislation.

That would be an important step toward ending decades of systemic payroll abuses within the Fire Department, Jackson has said.

The City Council was considering legislation this morning authorizing the proposed charter change to appear on the November 6 ballot.

If voters approve the measure, Jackson will be empowered to appoint the chief, three deputy chiefs and an assistant chief from either the department ranks or from outside the department. The chief’s command staff, however, must be selected from a list of candidates recommended by the chief.

Right now, candidates for supervisory positions within the department must take an exam and win approval from the city’s Civil Service Commission to fill those jobs.

Although Timothy O’Toole, a 31-year veteran of the department, is serving as interim chief, the permanent position remains up for grabs since former Chief Paul Stubbs retired earlier this year.

The mayor hopes the appointments will deepen the sense of accountability among department brass, who until now have failed to adequately supervise their charges.

After a series of city auditors identified numerous payroll abuses in the Fire Department, a special investigator last month recommended the city pursue criminal charges against five firefighters who, according to his investigation, had been illegally paying colleagues to work their shifts while continuing to collect salaries and benefits.

The five firefighters, and an additional firefighter who in April pleaded guilty to the charges in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, represent the most serious of the abusers, the special investigator concluded.

In the past year, city auditors discovered that 518 of the nearly 800 firefighters failed to fully repay trades between 2006 and 2010. Forty-seven of them each owed colleagues more than 750 hours. Meanwhile, more than 300 firefighters were owed time for shift trades more than a year old.

The firefighters union contract permits shift trades but requires they be repaid within a year. Selling the shifts or accepting money to work a colleague’s government job –- a practice commonly referred to as "caddying" -- is illegal.

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